This is just a further reminder not to have your shitty tech demos be leaked the general public before they're ready. They'll almost certainly change it to the 70+ genders you can already choose for your profile before the release date.

Geared for finding more “serious relationships.”

I can't tell if this is because it's bad to have casual sex exploits connected to your profile or because they're trying to appease a more conservative general society? They are including non-binary genders.

Middle school is a tight block for me because it's in between when I was first exposed to music via the radio/dad and when I got my first job at 15 and suddenly had money to actually go to concerts. Because of this and how bland radio playlists are there really aren't a lot of things that trigger flashbacks to that time period.

BUT

I was driving back from band practice one day and heard this shit on the radio. Waves of nostalgia came over me, yet I couldn't for the life of me figure out what song it was. Turns out it was Harvey Danger the goat screaming about having his legs cut off.

And because I was technically 14 in the ninth grade I got really into viking metal with friends.

I went through public schooling in Canada in the mid-2000's, and I learned next-to-nothing about these topics. It was a standard education in Canadian/North American history but the extent to which negative aspects of colonization were brought forward were very minimal. Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue type shit. Basically the Europeans came over to strike an awesome trade deal and indigenous (called natives at the time) people just kind of hung out, helped the Canadians, occasionally got the short end of the stick, and now everyone is happy in our technologically advanced civilization. Residential schools weren't taught in my public school, and the brief discussion on it in high school provided very little context on how bad things remain to this day, or y'know, the fact the last one closed in 1996.

It's really embarrassing but all I can do at this point is listen. The suicide rate on reserves is absolutely staggering and a national emergency. Things need to change a lot quicker than they are right now, and while establishing a new legal framework is a great step forward I don't think the political willpower exists to make moves fast enough. A LOT of Canadians are quite racist, and still see indigenous people as lazy or worse.

Oh, Nietzsche runs antithetical to everything Peterson believes. I love it. He's said things about embracing chaos and quite literally proclaiming the death of god.

I don't know if all of Peterson's followers are zeroes though. They are in the sense that they're weak, but there seems to be two categories here. You have your standard consumers who agree simply due to political affiliation. Maybe they are the zeroes. These people are stubborn and unreachable. His self-help fans on the other hand, I mean, they are the opposite of cocksure. They're just lost in life for whatever reason, and are so desperate for an answer that they think maybe spending $30 will solve it. Completed individuals do not require self-help. You hear the life changing anecdotes and think, really, this guy changed your life? People who are really depressed are willing to do anything to make the pain go away, and if pop-culture is promoting a public intellectual with "the answers" they might be willing to listen. Any program seems superior to total nihilism at that point.

I think that's what I was trying to get at in my post. There are people that are stubborn but they mainly fall into the first category. The second category includes a lot of people unable to make up their mind about anything and therefore they can potentially be engaged. These are the same people who "bounce" from thinker to thinker. Actually saw a dude saying his favourite thinkers are "Carl Sagan", "Jordan Peterson", "Mr. Rogers" or something along those lines in their Tinder bio. How can you not realize the internal inconsistency in all those views?

So there needs to be an alternative perspective that can get people out of that depressing nihilism without all of Peterson's baggage. I don't know what that might be. The affirmation of art as Nietzsche does is interesting, but I don't know if that will work.

Mother. of. god. That is a fantastic article. To actually see one of his colleagues come out with an article this deep is lovely. I love the "behind the scenes" on that guy.

As cliche as Nietzsche quotes probably are by now, I am reminded of the classic "“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

The author nails this by describing Peterson as the true totalitarian. How on Earth can you rail against chaos when chaos has never been friendly to anyone seeking a totalitarian government? He also describes the left as "anarchical". Forget about the rules of your country (laws). Rules for life?

Peterson's time is up. Check the IAmA he's doing on Reddit right now. He has some severely downvoted comments on there. The crowd is turning against him much like Jesus Christ, except this time he won't be remembered fondly after being nailed to the cross.

Peterson is an artist. It might be better to challenge him by being public figures ourselves and communicating the exact opposite vision rather than writing articles debunking him.